Thankfully, most people don’t experience a sudden shift from
feeling normal to the scary, distorting depersonalization depicted in
Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream”.
But the notion that one’s personality can change (unlike eye color and voice)
is gaining some traction. There are important implications for
organizations.
In selection and development processes for all kinds of
organizations, psychometric testing plays an important role.
Unsurprisingly, these processes are critical in self-managing organizations,
where management decision-making authority is widely distributed to and
assumed by its members. Those members, in turn, shoulder a very high
quantum of responsibility and accountability. Organizations--all
organizations--must deploy solid processes to select, develop and acculturate
people in their unique ecosystems.
Ipsative (self-referential) and normative (comparative) tests and
test vendors populate the human resources landscape, selling millions of
instruments each year and producing vast reams of data on every conceivable
personality characteristic. Industrial psychologists consult with
thousands of companies on how best to select people, develop leaders, and
blend teams.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, in an article titled
Can Personality Be Changed?,i
says that beliefs play a critical role in how a person functions.
People can have either a “fixed” belief (what she refers to as “entity”
belief), meaning that they believe that one’s characteristics are stable and
fixed, like eye color. Other people have what she refers to as
“malleable” beliefs, meaning that basic attributes can be developed.
Her research indicates that those with a malleable belief system are more
open to new learning, more willing to stick with difficult tasks, more
willing to confront challenges, and better able to bounce back from
setbacks.II And those qualities make a big
difference in a high-performance business environment where time pressure,
conflict and relationships are constant challenges.
Dweck cites research showing the malleable mindset can be
taught.III Aronson, Fried, and Good (2002)
performed a study with several college students. Students in the
experimental group watched a film showing how the brain makes new connections
and grows in response to challenge. They also wrote a letter to a
struggling fellow student describing how intelligence can expand through
work. At the end of that semester, the college students exposed to the
concepts of malleable intelligence (compared to two control groups that did
not) placed a measurably higher value on academic achievement, enhanced joy
in their academic work, and higher grade-point averages.
Researchers Peter A. Heslin and Don VandeWalle note in a recent
article Managers’ Implicit Assumptions About
Personnel,ivreferring to Dweck’s findings,
that entity theorists’ implicit assumption that personal attributes are
largely stable leads them to quickly form strong impressions of others that
they resist revising, even in light of contradictory information. Their
own research demonstrated that the mindset (fixed vs. malleable) of managers
in a nuclear power plant played a huge role in the degree to which they
acknowledged improved performance in subordinates. Is it possible that
this concept contains some large ramifications for performance appraisal
processes?
In an article by Jeanna Bryner entitled Study: Your
Personality Can Change (and Probably
Should),v she writes: “Dweck and her
colleagues have shown that “when you change the belief, a lot of important
things happen: students’ motivation turns around; their grades and test
scores go up; managers become better mentors, more successful
negotiators.”
Bryner continues, quoting Dweck: “Individuals with fixed ideas
about their personalities don’t try to resolve conflicts. Why bother? ‘They
just try to either ignore [the conflict] or when it gets really bad they
consider leaving the relationship.”
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i
Dweck, Carol, Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 2008;
vol. 17, 6: pp. 391-394.
ii Ibid.
iii Ibid.
iv Heslin, Peter A., and VandeWalle, Don, Current Directions in
Psychological Science, June 2008; vol. 17, 3: pp. 219-223.
v https://www.livescience.com/9507-study-personality-change.html
vi Ibid.
